Description
GUIDANCE AND COUNSELLING STRATEGIES IN DEALING WITH STUDENTS INDISCIPLINE IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS: EFFECTIVENESS AND CHALLENGES FOR COUNSELLORS IN LAIKIPIA COUNTY, KENYA
Janerose Mulamba Mayabi
Laikipia University
Email: jmaybi@laikipia.ac.ke
ABSTRACT
Indiscipline in schools remains a major social problem world over, yet it’s an important component of the teaching process and therefore an important aspect of the school system. For academics to be successful there must be discipline. The government banned corporal punishment through legal notice No 56 of 2001. Therefore guidance and Counselling (G/C) was left as the means to handle indiscipline. The study purposes to investigate effectiveness of guidance and Counselling in dealing with indiscipline in schools and the challenges faced. The study was guided by social learning theory by Albert Bandura. Using Ex post facto research design, Stratified, simple random sampling was used to select schools, which include boys, girls and mixed schools. Three self- constructed questionnaires were used to gather data pertaining to the causes, specific methods used in enhancing student discipline from head teachers, discipline masters and Counselors. Descriptive statistics included percentage and mean which were used in answering the research questions, while one way ANOVA was employed to test the hypotheses at the 0.05 level of significance. The study found that various types of indiscipline exist in the schools, including absenteeism, sneaking, stealing, truancy, drug abuse, and use of abusive language. Methods used to deal with indiscipline included group, individual and peer Counselling. Study findings indicated that group counseling was the more preferred compared to individual and peer counseling. Main challenge faced by the administrators is lack of parent participation in their children’s discipline. The study concluded that guidance and Counselling, despite being the best and most preferred strategy, was ineffective in curbing indiscipline in secondary schools in Kenya.
Key words: Counselling, strategies, Students, indiscipline. Effectiveness
